Lichens are symbiotic associations between fungi and algae. The fungus provides the alga with a place to live, and the alga photosynthesizes and shares some of the resulting 'food' with the fungus. One provides room; the other provides board. It benefits both species to hang out together, and provides a nice example of two phylogenetic 'branches' of the 'tree of life' merging into one. There are many varieties of lichens, living in a diversity of habitats, but they're easiest to spot in colder zones where they are first in line to colonize raw rock surfaces.

When I was in Ecuador in January, I saw a lot of lichens, and took some photos of them. I'm not a lichen expert, and I won't attempt to name these varieties. I'm more interested in them as aesthetic phenomena. I find them beautiful.

This one reminds me of ripples on a pond's surface, spreading out over decades and centuries:


The orange here is also a lichen:


These wispy lichens were three-dimensional structures that were found all over the ground surface (not encrusted on a rock) in the paramo ecosystem.


They were present in such profusion in Cotopaxi National Park that the ground looked from a distance as if it had a light layer of snow on it:


Other ground lichens:




Lichen-bearded goofball:

Labels: ecuador, fungi, humor, plants, south america, travel

For the penultimate post in my Ecuador travel series, I hereby recount the story of climbing the mountain called Iliniza Norte (16,997 feet above sea level: the tallest peak I've ever summitted).

We began by driving up from the town of Chaupi, where we were staying at a hostel, to the trailhead above treeline in the paramo ecosystem...


We had hoped for awesome weather, but as with our previous peak bagging in Ecuador, the clouds were here too, making a ceiling that we headed up into...




Heading up into the clouds; the valley below fades away...


...and we start to see snow.






We went up a long, steep snowfield for probably two hours... It was frustrating going: take one step forward, slide two steps backward. The snow got thicker and thicker...

Eventually, when we got close to the summit, we got off the snowfield and onto some rocks. I was surprised to feel how my energy spiked at the prospect of rock-scrambling. The long slog up the snowfield was boring and repetitive, but this was totally engaging as a physical/mental workout. Here's Lily and Diego climbing up:



At the summit, there's a steel cross with various doodads attached...


This is the highest point above sea level I've ever experienced. When I stood on the summit, my head was above 17,000 feet in elevation!



Silly video of the summit team making celebratory noises:


Then Diego said, "I think we go down now, because of thunders."

The guy knows his stuff: as soon as he had said this, we heard a ba-boom from off in the white clouds somewhere... Yikes. Okay, time to head down.

Descending the rocks:


When we got to the snowfield, another peal of thunder sounded, and this one was louder than the first one. The snowfield, fortunately, made for easy going -- we essentially skied down it. It was pretty exciting... Flashes of lightning, booms of thunder (sometimes within a microsecond of one another), adrenaline pumping, running/sliding/skiing downhill as fast as we could.

We did not get hit by lightning.

After we got below cloud level (and into a valley where we felt a little less exposed to lightning strikes), we could see that the lower elevations had gotten some frozen precipitation too: a mix of snow and hail:











When we got back to the vehicle, we found it covered in hail:


Now for the adventure after the adventure: driving down a steep, twisting, muddy mountain road that's coated with hail and host to numerous roaring streams of runoff. It was almost as intense as descending the snowfield amid lightning bolts: the vehicle slid and knocked against a mud embankment at one point, and it was all seriously sketchy. Diego said he had never seen anything like it.

Here's some video of a raging torrent of meltwater/runoff flowing over a road surface that's decorated with white hailstones:



We did not crash the car.

Back safely at the hostel, we took hot showers and drank beer and congratulated ourselves for clearly being such daring adventurers. Whew... the next morning, we took our weary selves back to Quito.

One more Ecuador post to go... on lichens... stay tuned.

Labels: ecuador, ice, mountains, snow, south america, travel, volcano

As you'll recall, when I left off with my Ecuadorian travelouge, Lily and I had summited Pasochoa, and then taken a day-hike in Cotopaxi National Park. Next up, a new mountain that has about the same elevation as Mt. Whitney (highest peak in the lower 48 United States): about 14,500 feet. To climb this extinct volcano called Ruminahui (Roo-min-ya-wee), we headed up a ridge between two adjacent glacially-carved valleys.















Me with clouds and background glacial valley:


Diego (our guide) on the trail:


Up on top, there was less vegetation, but more cloud... and snow was falling.

The bedrock was a volcanic breccia that had been cut by numerous andesitic dikes:






You can see some blurry snowflakes in the previous photo. Here's a cold-looking Lily with her boots on an andesitic dike:



Here's a couple of close-ups to show the cross-cutting relationships between the andesite dikes and the volcanic breccia:





Here's a short, not-especially-great video wherein I point out a few things that don't really show up all that well. Still, you get to see it snowing!

A big "thanks" to NOVA's king of digital video, Richard Attix, who helped me rotate this video and crop out some unintended footage from the raw video we shot on the mountain that day.

Cold hikers:



"Sheesh! It's cold up here!":



On the way down, we also took some time to check out the plants. Here's one called "Orejas de conejo" ("Ears of the rabbit"):

Here's one that smells exactly like chocolate!


In fact, Lily was able to harvest this chocolate bar from it!

Okay, not really. It's money that grows on trees, not chocolate bars.

So that's the story of our second successful summit... now there was only one more to go... the legendary Iliniza Norte. Photos from that hike in a couple of days...

Labels: ecuador, glacial landforms, mountains, plants, sediment, south america, travel, volcano

We now return you to our originally-scheduled photo-travelogue...

On the second day of our Andean mountain tour in Ecuador, Lily and I set out from Tambopaxi Lodge, our comfortable accomodation in Cotopaxi National Park:



We were going for a day-hike, checking out the scenery with our guide Diego while we acclimatized for some more serious mountain climbing in the days to come. The official goal of our hike was to check out two naturally-flowing cold springs, where the agua was pura, and safe to drink. Here's the first one, issuing from the base of a lava flow, with me awkwardly twisting around to raise a bottle of the good stuff:



Spring #2, of greater volume:


Some shots of the scenery:







The extinct volcano Sincholagua:


Me with Sincholagua (and lower cloud cover) in the distance:

A look back at Pasochoa, which we had climbed the day before:


And Cotopaxi itself, the charismatic, active volcano which draws most people to the park:


Critters:

A big insect, maybe a grylloblattid?


Feral horses:


We also saw some cool "primitive" plants (plants with ancient lineages):

Liverworts:


Sphenopsids:


Club mosses:


There was also some geology going on...

Here's a handful of loose lapilli (mixed in with some organics):


Stream deposits on the flanks of Cotopaxi Volcano, showing different water energy regimes. The coarsest layer in the middle represents the fastest moving water (capable of carrying larger particles of sediment):


And here's some flow-banding in andesite:


It started raining on our way back to the lodge, but that was okay, because hot showers and warm tea awaited there. Acclimatization, check! Next up, the peak known as Ruminahui...

Labels: arthropods, critters, ecuador, geology, mammals, plants, south america, travel, volcano

I went to Ecuador to climb mountains.

After a lovely two days of recovery in the thermal springs of Papallacta, Lily and I began our mountain-climbing tour. We summited three peaks in the central Ecuadorian Andes: Pasochoa, Ruminahui, and Iliniza Norte. Today I'd like to share our experiences climbing the first (and shortest) of those, the peak called Pasochoa. Here it is from the rough road we drove in on:



From a Google Maps perspective, here's the physiography of the surrounding area. Pasochoa is the highest peak of the central volcano in this view:



Once we started hiking, we got above the trees and into the paramo ecosystem, a high-elevation grassland biome that exists between treeline and the bare rocks above where only lichens survive. Another view of the peak, which is about 13,700 feet in elevation:



Once we got up a little bit, we could look down to the Valle de los Chillos, a massive valley between Andean peaks, south of Quito:



One of the most spectacular things that happened on this hike is we saw an Andean condor, which flew by between us and this view, quite spectacularly. We weren't able to get the camera out in time to capture it, but with its black and white plumage, it was unmistakeable. Here's a amateurish Photoshop to show what it kind of looked like:



I pointed out the volcanic breccia to Lily and our guide, Diego:



More of the same could be seen in eroded-out minarets on the flanks of the mountain:




Pasochoa is one tall bit along the rim of a much larger caldera, and when we got up to the edge of that caldera, we got a real sense of its sudden drop-off. Clouds/fog curled up and over the lip, obscuring the view, but we could peer down into them and see that the land dropped steeply away for many hundreds of feet.



Lily gives a sense of scale to the edge of the caldera:



After lunch on top, more clouds moved in, and we decided to decamp back to the vehicle. Here's Diego and I descending the trail towards lower elevations.



Being a guy who had just recently recovered from something akin to pneumonia, I felt pretty good about making the summit of a 13,700' peak. Next up: let's see if we can't find something a little bit taller...

Labels: birdies, ecuador, mountains, south america, travel, volcano

Last month, when hiking Iliniza Norte, a 16,997' volcano in Ecuador, we got up near the summit and began scrambling over the rocks there. Conditions were cold and snowy, and I was pleased to see some beautiful ice formations in protected nooks in the rock. These crystals of ice had a gorgeous branching pattern...



To show this branching pattern close up, here's Lily's gloved hand holding two such crystals (fused together). They look like squirrel tails!



The backdrop of oxidized porphyritic andesite (hosting lichens) isn't bad either.

Labels: ecuador, ice, minerals, travel

Here's a pretty cool outcrop I found as we were leaving Cotopaxi National Park in Ecuador (in early January). I've got two small photos taken laterally on different parts of the outcrop (exposed by a stream), and then I follow those with two close-up crops, showing the details. I've posted the full-size versions of the first two photos on Flickr, so you can click through if you want more details. The zoomed-in shots are displayed here at the same size you'll find on Flickr.





What's going on here? It looks like we've got a series of thinner, relatively fine-grained layers below, topped off with a massive, poorly-sorted layer. The lower layers are all ash- and lapilli-sized grains, each stratum pretty well sorted. The upper layer consists of all kinds of different-sized chunks, including some boulders, "floating" in a really fine-grained matrix. Check it out:





I interpret this as a series of volcanic ash-(& lapilli-)falls that were then buried beneath a lahar, a volcanic mudflow. The lahar's slurry-like consistency was capable of transporting really large clasts, and when it slowed down, it set up like nature's concrete.

I think this is pretty spectacular stuff.

Labels: ecuador, igneous, mass wasting, south america, stratigraphy, travel, volcano

You know what feels really good when you're feeling sick? A hot bath.

And so, when it came to pass that over the winter break, I flew down to Ecuador with a recovering case of pneumonia, my friend Lily and I opted to put our mountain-climbing plans on hold, and go sit in some hot water instead.



From Quito, we took a public bus ($2) an hour east to a series of thermal pools at Papallacta ("papa yacht uh"). This is a lovely resort, nestled in a lovely valley:



Inside the resort (>$2), the architecture was fused with the landscaping in some interesting pseudo-natural ways. For instance, this is in the lounge, where the rocky wall rises up, but then stops some distance below where the wooden ceiling begins. The interval is filled with glass, but the illusion is that the building is open to nature.



They've got nice grounds, too. An organic garden is featured, and they have some neat sculptures. This one is clearly inspired by Andy Goldsworthy.



But there was a mystery... The local river, which carved the valley, was cold:



...So where did the hot water come from? We had noticed some steaming pools on the bus ride over the Andes, at higher elevation. Taking a walk on our second day there, we saw this aqueduct coming down the mountain into the valley:



Aha! It must be that they are pulling the hot water out of the actual hot springs up above, then piping it down to Papallacta for people to enjoy.

Papallacta is just south of the Equator:



At the Equator, Papallacta's elevation of ~10,000 feet (~3300 m) is quite pleasant. A tad chilly when it's dark or overcast, but the snow was at a higher elevation still:



Hiking around in between soaks in the lovely hot water, we saw hummingbirds galore, including the bizarre sword-billed hummingbird, which has a beak longer than its body (Google it to see!) We also saw some cool critters, like this beetle:



...And also some cool plants. Lily's really into plants, but even I can appreciate their numerous and varied forms, especially in as biodiverse a place as Ecuador...



Flower-on-a-stem, within a leaf:



After soaking and resting and acclimatizing at Papallacta, I felt a lot better and we trooped back to Quito to meet up with our guide and start climbing mountains... More on that in posts to come.

Labels: art, arthropods, birdies, critters, ecuador, hot springs, plants, south america, travel

This map of the country of Mongolia was featured on the wall of Mongo's Mongolian Barbeque restaurant* in Quito, Ecuador. It is rendered in cowhide, with colored bits of leather doing all the decoration and adornment. It's really a pretty impressive work of art: cartographically accurate (with some omissions due to space constraints close to Ulaanbaatar), but also beautiful. It did not have a key or legend with it, but blue blobs represent lakes (like these). Yellow areas appear to represent high-elevation areas. Off-white appears to represent steppe, though the distribution shown on this map is not exactly how I would have drawn it. Brown circles are "major" cities, while blue circles represent villages. Of particular note to me was that my Peace Corps site, the itty-bitty village of Ereentsav, is located on the map, probably because it's a border-crossing town with Siberia. It's one of the two little blue dots in the northeast (upper right) of the map. Google Maps can show you the town's location on the Siberian border, though they spell its name differently ("Ereencav"):



Incredibly, the satellite photos for this region of the world are good enough that you can zoom in and see the house I lived in when I served there. See the green building in the middle? I lived in the little shed (half as wide as the green building, a little longer) just to its right (east). My outhouse is even visible -- the little square nubbin in the southern corner of the fenced-in area:



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* "Mongolian Barbeque" is a branch of Inner Mongolian cuisine. Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region in China, with decent food. "Outer" Mongolia is the country of Mongolia, its own nation, distinct from China. I served there in the Peace Corps in 1998-1999, and I can tell you from experience that they do not serve especially good food. Maybe that's being too harsh... Let's just say that in Mongolia, you don't eat Mongolian Barbeque.

Labels: art, ecuador, maps, mongolia

I've had a trusty pair of Nalgene water bottles for many years. One of the things I do is collect stickers when I travel, and then slap them on the outside of these water bottles. Here, for example, is one side of the two bottles:


Here's the other side:


The full record of stickers is:

Recreation and Parks program at NOVA
Wilderness Medical Associates (the group that trained me in WFA last May)
Northern Arizona University Department of Geography, Planning, and Recreation
Yellowstone National Park
Sport Rock, a climbing gym in Alexandria, Virginia
Mammoth Cave National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park
Gimme! Coffee, Ithaca, New York
Apple computer
Red Cross' "Give Blood" campaign (I cut up this sticker & distributed its bits across the bottles)
Alaska flag (from the ferry through the Inside Passage)
Pickle Barrel sandwich shop, Bozeman, Montana
Vieques, Puerto Rico
"Certified Organic" from a bunch of bananas
The Red Hand of Ulster (from my time in Northern Ireland)
Puri Saron, a resort in Lombok, Indonesia (I didn't actually go to this one; my friend Kenny did.)
British flag
State Farm Insurance (reflective!)
Mauna Kea observatories (Hawai'i)
KZMU public radio in Moab, Utah
Thyangboche Monastery, Nepal (I didn't go to this one, either. Thanks Kenny!)
"MtP" in an oval: Mt. Pleasant, a DC neighborhood I used to live in, just north of my current digs

There's a lot of personal history there, a sort of visual record of the places I've been. Trouble is, apparently the water bottles themselves were poisoning me. At least that's what they started saying last year; specifically that water bottles containing a substance called Bisphenol A (commonly referred to as "BPA") were not to be trusted. Though I haven't read the studies, they are reported to have found a significant correlation between high levels of BPA and heart disease, diabetes, and high levels of some liver enzymes. Plus, people keep nagging me about giving up my old water bottles, and I'm getting tired of inventing excuses for continuing to drink out of them. So yesterday, I officially retired my old sticker-covered bottles, and bought two new (BPA-free) Nalgenes instead:


You'll notice that I switched color schemes and mouth types (the new bottles have a narrow mouth). And you'll also notice that I've put my first sticker in place on the new bottles: from the Tambopaxi Lodge in Cotopaxi National Park in Ecuador, where I stayed for two nights the week before last. (If you're ever in Cotopaxi, you must stay there: It's really excellent.)

Background fabric for all images is a new tablecloth I bought at a craft market in Quito (for $2).

The old bottles will be hung above the mantle of the library hearth at the Bentley Estate, in commemoration of their usefulness and long history.

Labels: art, ecuador, gear, travel

Just a quick note to say: I'm back!

I left Quito this morning at 10am, and just got back to my apartment in DC around 8pm. Feels good to be back home. I had a fun trip, and I'll tell you all about it, but probably not 'til the semester gets underway. First classes are at noon tomorrow!

Labels: dc, ecuador, south america, travel

This is from the tour operators in charge of me this week...
-CB

Day 01. Quito - Pasochoa
Pick up in your hotel. we depart from Quito at 09h00 in the direction to Volcano Pasochoa, where your trekking begins. As you walk up hill towards it summit (4200m) you will enjoy the views of the neighbours peaks such as Antisana, Rumiñahui and Cotopaxi. You will head south on a easy going trail along the crater edge of this extinct volcano, Condors and other birds of pray are often seen before you descend in a green valley. We arrive in a Aclimatization Center Tambopaxi is located at 3200 m. a refugee in the middle of Cotopaxi and Ruminahui volcanoes.

Day 02.- Limpiopungo, at the base of the Cotopaxi Volcano
Today you will explore the Paramo of the Cotopaxi National Park. Here you will visit the Pre-Inca ruins of El Salitre while enjoying magnificent views of Cotopaxi Glaciers. Afterwards you will continue to Limpiopungo valley and lake. Return. Dinner and overnight.

Day 03.- Climb. Ruminahui & Limpiopungo Lake
Today is the longest day of your trekking tour. You will walk along a trail, up and down following the flanks of Ruminahui peak observing birds of prey and in the horizon the mighty Chimborazo, and Illinizas. Return to Limpiopungo where we dirve to the Cuello de Luna. Dinner and overnight.

Day 04.- Illiniza Ecological Reserve
Drive to the north following the route Illinizas reserve until arrive to la Llovisma, another acclimatization center. Overnight.

Day 05.- Climb Illiniza North - return to Quito
Today you can either drive to the parking place of the Illinizas and walk uphill to the settlement of Illinizas and summit the north peak which is rather easy and recommended as training for those who will attempt Cotopaxi. Somewhere in highlands, your vehicle will be waiting to transfer you back to Quito.
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Here's the view of Illiniza Sur from Illiniza Norte:

Oh, yeah....

Labels: ecuador, mountains, south america, travel

What's the tallest mountain on Earth? Most would say Everest, since it's the highest point above sea level. I mentioned this issue as part of my lead-in to my Mauna Kea post, since some folks might claim Mauna Kea as the tallest, since it rises the most above its base on the oceanic crust of the Pacific Plate. But there's a third contender: Mount Chimborazo, in Ecuador.

The planet Earth is not a perfect sphere; it bulges a bit at the equator (about 13 miles) compared to the poles. The result is that if you look at two mountains of exactly the same elevation, one located at the pole and one at the equator, the equatorial one will be 13 miles further away from the center of the Earth than the polar one. That makes the peak of the tallest equatorial mountain (Chimborazo is at ~1.5 degrees south) the point on Earth that is furthest away from the center of the planet. It is 1.3 miles (2.1 km) further away from the center of the Earth than the summit of Everest is. NPR covered this surprising statistic in an entertaining piece in 2007. However, as the commenter on this post-NPR post notes, it's not just the silicate earth that bulges at the equator, it's the atmosphere, too. So it's not like the air is thinner at Chimborazo than Everest. You may be closer to the Moon atop Chimborazo, but you're not closer to "space" due to all that extra thick atmosphere above your head.

Here's a Google Maps "terrain view" map of Chimborazo (high relief peak east of El Arenal):


I had hoped to "auto-post" this while I'm traveling in Ecuador, for about the same time I would be looking at Chimborazo with my own eyes. However, I got sick over the holidays, and the persistent illness forced me to change my travel plans. I'll still be going to Ecuador -- but only for one week instead of the planned two. And I still hope to catch a glimpse of Mount Chimborazo. Hopefully when I get back to DC, I'll be able to share some photos of this superlative mountain. For now, the map will have to do.

Labels: ecuador, maps, mountains, south america, travel, volcano

I'm sorry, did somebody say there was a holiday this week?

I've been very preoccupied with the spring semester; putting my syllabi together, taking care of committee work before I leave for Ecuador next week. And they tell me the Christmas is coming up, too... It's been busy!

Does anyone have any travel advice for Ecuador? I've had so little time to plan for this trip that I really haven't made any concrete plans other than buying an airplane ticket into Quito. Because I waited so long to start planning, it looks like I missed out on the opportunity to check out the Galapagos on this trip. Very well: I'll be back!

So it looks like I'll be spending most of my time in the Andean highlands, which ain't so bad. My friend Bridget recommended the South American Explorers Club as being a great organization to join for a network of fellow travelers in the country. They even have clubhouses in Quito, Buenos Aires, Cusco, and Lima...

I'd like to spend my time hiking and geologizing out in the mountainous countryside, but have a comfy roost for the evenings. Any and all advice would be welcome. Either post in the comments section below, or shoot me an e-mail at:

Labels: ecuador, south america, travel

Christie asks: What are your top ten geological resolutions for the new year?


For me, the list would include:

1. visiting the Galapagos Islands
2. visiting the high Andes (Cotopaxi, Chimborazo), Ecuador
3. finding a cool outcrop of graded beds in the Martinsburg Formation (late Ordovician turbidites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia) that Rick Diecchio told me about last week
4. "walking on the Moho" in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland (late summer)
5. seeing Snowball rocks and Ediacarans on the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland (late summer)
6. visiting Egg Mountain paleontological site, Montana
7. joining my colleague Ken Rasmussen's field trip to the Culpeper Basin, a Triassic rift valley in northern Virginia
8. some cool trip next winter break (2009-10): perhaps Patagonia? Or Antarctica?

I've also got some big teaching resolutions:

1. Running a successful and robust Structural Geology course for George Mason University (spring semester).
2. Running a successful and innovation Environmental Geology course for NOVA (spring semester).
3. Running a successful and safe Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course for NOVA (summer semester).
4. Preparing and running a successful and groundbreaking Honors Historical Geology course linked with English Literature 242 at NOVA, where the English professor and I will bridge the two subjects with readings of Lyell, Darwin, "A Pair of Blue Eyes," and others (fall semester).

On other topics:

1. Finish my M.S.S.E. degree (July)
2. Buy a house
3. Put together a series of geology 'vodcasts' on local geology
4. Write a few freelance articles
5. Publish one cartoon per month in EARTH
6. Prepping (cutting and polishing) a backlog of rock samples from all over the place
7. Successfully moving the geology department into our new building

Labels: canada, ecuador, geology, msse, newfoundland, nova, south america, teaching, travel, valley and ridge, virginia